The myth of short cycle testing and equity
A new myth is being perpetuated on the American public and the education community concerning standardized testing: that doing it multiple times a year is better for students and schools than just doing it once. This myth is being furthered under several different labels: progress monitoring, periodic assessments, formative testing, etc., all of which muddy the water. Even worse, the arguments for the myth are almost always arguments in the name of equity. For a moment, forget the names. Let’s use standardized test, since that is a phrase the world is reasonably familiar with. Standardized tests are tests built in partnership with very talented statisticians as comparative instruments. That allows the scores they produce to be used to compare different students to each other as well as compare a student’s score this year to last year. Or in the instance of this latest idea about testing, a score at the beginning of the year to a score at the middle of the year to a score at the e...